Here Comes The Bride

I’m a low-maintenance chick. I like things to be simple, real, logical, rational and dependable. I’d take a Volvo over a BMW any day, think designer clothes are for suckers, and would snuggle up to a good geek before I got anywhere near a playboy type. So it should come as no surprise that I have a soft spot for businesses that are simple, logical, low-maintenance, dependable and not wrought with bells and whistles – or with fancy offices, proprietary technology and a lot of overhead. But damn, those are hard to find.

Fortunately, here comes the bride.

BravoBride, that is. BravoBride is the brainchild of the recently married Susan Alexander, who started the virtual wedding marketplace after being unable to buy or sell used goods for her own wedding.

I am in love with this business. Why? It has a huge addressable market – more than $161 Billion annually. The buying and selling of wedding goods is evergreen – not dependent on season or trends. The problem and solution – acquisition of goods – are simple. There is virtually no R & D, no need for complex infrastructure. Revenue exists from a variety of sources, from an enormous number of people in small enough transactions that it should be steady and without a need for a big sales effort. Amen.

I asked Susan a few questions, and she gave me some simple answers.

Although I can probably guess, where did the idea for Bravo Bride come from?
I got married this past July 4th and when I was planning the wedding I found it frustrating to pay for expensive wedding items that I’d use once and only for a few hours. I looked on Craigslist and Ebay but there wasn’t anything focused on just the bridal industry.

When you were first starting Bravo Bride, what did you see as your biggest obstacles?
I was worried that I would have to spend a lot of time on customer service questions or even worse that no one would use it. Luckily, neither has been the case.

What made you think you could do it?
I am a big believer that not trying is a much worse failure than trying something and not succeeding at it. I figured if the site didn’t work out at least I knew and instead of wondering what could have been.

You made the choice not to take on investors, why?
I knew I could bootstrap it and that I didn’t need to take on investors in order to figure out if brides were going to use it. A few things that really helped with costs were that I designed the site myself and my programmer gave me a really good deal on the development cost. I did a trade with a copywriter for the content of my site and as I mentioned earlier I hired interns to help market the site. All of these things really helped keep costs down. It was also nice to know that if the site failed it was only my money I was losing.

What do you think sets you apart from your competitors?
What sets me apart is that you won’t find fish tanks and bicycles on the site, we only focus on wedding products. Craigslist and Ebay are probably my biggest competitors but you have to search through so many things on Craigslist to find what you are looking for and it’s only for certain regions. Our site is nationwide and we have an advanced search so you can quickly find what you are looking for. The site is also broken down into different categories, such as dresses, jewelry, items for the ceremony and reception and more. Unlike Ebay is completely free to list items and there’s never a sale upon commission. There’s another site that sells pre-owned wedding dresses but this is all they sell and they charge a $25 listing fee.

We live in the land of technology and widgets and gadgets and gee-whiz features. Your company is about as simple as it gets, so you’re sort of going against the trend…..
I think that’s why Craigslist is so successful, it’s easy. That’s how I wanted my site to feel too. Sometimes when you add too many features and options it gets so confusing and convoluted that people don’t want to bother with it. That’s the good and bad part of technology, it’s there to make our lives more simple but sometimes that doesn’t always happen.

A business isn’t any more or less complicated than any relationship. Identify the needs of all parties, meet them simply and directly, focus on what really matters and be committed. Don’t get distracted by fancy cars and bling, it’s what’s underneath that matters. In business – as in people – rational, dependable, logical and low-maintenance is good. As is getting along well with others.
_______
Alyssa is the founder of Just Cause It and is not a fancy wedding person, at all. Not even kind of. And she would never wear a diamond.